Applicants claim priority under 35 U.S.C. xc2xa7119 of German Application No. 199 27 811.3 filed Jun. 18, 1999 Applicants also claim priority under 35 U.S.C. xc2xa7120 of PCT/DE00/01931 filed Jun. 19, 2000. The international application under PCT article 21 (2) was not published in English.
The invention relates to a planing device that is mounted on machines for processing ice, for use in the area of the surface of the ice located close to the boards. Said device comprises a blade which is mounted with its carrier on the left side of the machine, preferably on the side wall of the planer carriage provided on the machine, said planer carriage resting on the surface of the ice with its skids.
Snow (ice abrasions) accumulates along the edge of the ice facing the boards during public skating hours and when ice hockey games are played, such accumulations of snow being caused when the skaters or players are braking. Such snow is only inadequately removed by the rotating belt-type broom that is mounted on most ice processing machines. Especially when snow accumulates in large amounts, the snow starts to thaw, which causes a layer of ice to grow below, against which the rotating belt-type broom is powerless. Such a layer of ice, which rises toward the boards, cannot be reached by the planing device of the ice machine because the outer edge of the planing carriage is formed by the skid of the carriage, and the planing blade starts only within the skid of the carriage. This type of arrangement is necessarily required for reasons of ice processing. The growing ice edge is annoying to ice hokey players (when playing the puck against the boards). Said edge is very troublesome also during the ice processing operation. When the planing carriage is driven close to the boards, the skid of the carrier slides on said grown ice edge. This causes the entire carrier to be lifted on one side, which compounds the problem on the side of the boards and causes a deepening to be formed on the side of the planing device facing away from boards. If the grown ice edge is not regularly removed, the ice continues to grow more and more in the direction of the boards across the entire width of the planing device.
The abrasion problem is less serious along the curves of the boards; however, it is known from past experience that the thickness of the entire layer of ice increases there as well due to the fact that water is applied on account of the centrifugal force. The edge of the blade of the planer, however, conditioned by the radius, cannot come closer to the boards in the curve of the latter than up to 200 to 250 mm.
At the gate where the ice processing machine enters and exits, the ice quickly grows there as well after the machine has left the area of the ice field unless residues of snow and water have been removed 100% by hand. If such undesirable thick areas of ice are not regularly removed by planing, the ice continues to grow from the boards to the center in increasingly thicker layers. This impairs not only the quality of the ice but causes unnecessary energy costs as well.
The areas where ice accumulated have been removed by planing until now by the employing the following methods:
(1) A metal frame with a planing blade having a length of about 30 cm is screwed to the left outer side of the planing carriage, and the area of the boards is planed with said planing blade. Using such a planing device is time-consuming and difficult.
(2) A revolving blade driven by a battery or a gasoline engine is mounted under a device similar to a lawn mower and guided by hand along the boards and across the other areas of the ice that need to be planed.
(3) The most comfortable solution available until now is a planing aggregate with a revolving blade that is mounted in a foldable manner on the planing carriage. Before the areas along the boards are planed, said aggregate is folded down into the operating position by hand, and then folded up again after it has been used.
All of said methods require one or several planing drives and, after the planing work has been completed, leave the snow in the area of the boards behind. This then requires subsequently several drives with the broom for sweeping the area of the boards until the edge of the ice facing the boards is actually free from snow and clean over the entire length of the edge. Employing such methods during normal ice processing periods, which are short, is completely impossible in conjunction with the devices employed according to items 1 and 2 above. With the method according to item 3, planing of the areas of the boards required the operator to leave the driver""s seat two times, and to carry out at least two additional drives along the boards as well.
Therefore, the invention is based on the problem of designing a planing device of the type specified above in such a way that the edge of the ice can be continually exactly processed along the barrier (boards) of the playing field without additional driving and assembly expenditure.
Said problem of the invention is solved according to the feature of the characterizing part of claim 1. Further advantageous forms of embodiment of the invention are the objects of the depending claims.
A blade that is set inclined inwards, and which can be extended and lowered, is mounted, for example on the left side wall of the planing carriage. Said blade can be operated from the seat of the driver without additional expenditure and keeps the entire outer rounding of the edge of the ice always at exactly right angles in relation to the boards. The term xe2x80x9ckeepsxe2x80x9d is intentionally selected because during normal applications, no planing is actually taking place in most cases, but the blade only scratches away the loose snow that accumulated along the edge of the boards. By setting the planer at an angle, the latter guides the loose snow below the carrier to the conveyor, which is an integral component of the ice processing machine. Behind the planer for the board areas, the surface of the ice extending at a right angle relative to the boards is smooth and free of snow in a plane coinciding with the main blade.
If, under special circumstances, for example after a skating period in which the ice has been used by particularly great numbers of skaters, or after the outer skating track has not been treated a number of times, real planing of the edges of the area of the boards is required. This is accomplished by simply operating the planer for the areas of the boards on the outer driving track from the seat of the driver in the same manner without any additional expenditure, and with the same result as obtained when the xe2x80x9csnow is just scratched awayxe2x80x9d in conventional operations.